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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26905336">Ship Around the Corner</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizard_socks/pseuds/lizard_socks'>lizard_socks</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Rootstock [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Baseball, Gen, Kidnapping, Mystery, Resurrection, Sorquines</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:34:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,028</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26905336</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizard_socks/pseuds/lizard_socks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When the catlike alien Sharona Misam visits Princeton, his alma mater (class of 2382), he finds himself playing in a baseball game against a barnstorming charity team made up of other aliens.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Rootstock [7]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778194</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Ship Around the Corner</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
<span>"This
is supposed to be a community baseball team," Misam said
as he
put on his jersey. "I'm an alien - I don't even live here.
You
</span><span><i>sure</i></span><span>
you want me on it?"</span></p><p>"Your
jersey still fits." Trav Walsh, a recent Princeton grad
(class
of 2398), tossed Misam a pair of white pants with a
pinstripe
pattern. "Couldn't find the rest of your old uniform,
though.
You might have to cut the tail hole yourself."</p><p>
  <span>"I
don't know - it's been a long time since I've played.
Maybe I'd be
more useful to you as the mascot. I </span>
  <span>
    <i>am</i>
  </span>
  <span>
an orange cat, after all." Misam took a
seat
on the bench and, grabbing the pants, started to cut a
hole with one
of his claws. He didn't come back to his alma mater on
Earth
expecting to be pulled into an amateur baseball game. Then
again, he
hadn't really expected anything in particular.</span>
</p><p>Except
maybe that Ashley would follow him around. "Didn't want to
stay
in Paramaribo after all, eh?" he asked the lanky young woman
sitting cross-legged on the dirt track above them. "Can't
say
I'm surprised."</p><p>"It's
a lovely city. But it's not my home." She turned to face
him.
"What rules are you using?"</p><p>"We're
using the 2019 MLB rules. Last year before the NL started
using the
DH. The other team was nice enough to let us pick the rules;
we're
gonna get creamed anyway. You know I'm not actually gonna
play,
right? I'm the third-string catcher."</p><p>"My
dad used to watch baseball games on his TV. He got into it
on a
business trip, I guess. Brought back all these World Series
videotapes. It'll be nice to see some baseball again, even I
still
don't really understand it."</p><p>"Did
he have 2004?"</p><p>"The
one where Boston finally won it after, like, a zillion
years?"</p><p>"The
one where Lindsay and Ben fell in love!"</p><p>
  <span>"You
</span>
  <span>
    <i>are</i>
  </span>
  <span>
a softie, Misam." Ashley looked around the modest field,
which
had been set up in a city park, and spotted an
incongruous-looking
metal pole in the outfield. "Are the lights new?" she
asked.</span>
</p><p>"The
aliens brought them. The light poles are mounted on their
shuttles."</p><p>Ashley
took a closer look. "Well, what do you know."</p><p>"When
you make most of your money on the road," Misam continued,
"you
invest in stuff you can bring with you. Portable lights are
actually
older than fixed ones - the Monarchs used them back in the
1930s."</p><p>Another
alien peeked her head into the dugout. She was about five
feet tall,
lilac-colored with white pupils inside big black eyes. "You
got
some new players today?" she asked Walsh.</p><p>"Just
one." Walsh turned to Misam. "That's their team doctor,"
he told him. "With them playing a different species every
day,
they wanna check everyone out to make sure nobody's
cheating."</p><p>"Ah,
cheating," Misam said. "Another fine baseball tradition."</p><p>The
alien climbed into the dugout and waved some sort of device
over
Misam's back. "I'm Dr. Morrison," she said. But you can
call me Deb."</p><p>"Sharona
Misam.
Xenobiologist. Which, since I'm not on my home planet, I
guess
is just a regular biologist."</p><p>Deb
moved the device to the tail. "You've got something down
here?"</p><p>"Alien
symbiote. Just found out about that, actually."</p><p>"Well,
that explains these readings. According to my computer, you
are in
unusually perfect health. Except that you have two brains."</p><p>"Is
that against the rules?"</p><p>Deb
shrugged. "I'll allow it. Our last opponent's catcher had
two
brains too."</p>
<hr/><p>The
opponent was the Sorquine Bandits, an alien barnstorming
team. The
team members were all sorquines - beings originally
belonging to
other species who, after fatal injuries, had been
resurrected through
the sorquines' assimilation process, which surrounded their
body in a
soft, light-colored biological material that compensated for
any
missing parts of their original body.
</p><p>Unlike
other assimilated species, sorquines typically kept their
memories
and personality, with no real mental changes as a result of
the
process, and eventually made their way back to their home
planets.
Occasionally, though, damage to the person's original brain
resulted
in a sorquine with no memory of their own identity. Helping
these
beings find themselves was the Bandits' purpose - the club's
profits
went towards efforts to help them discover their origins -
and a good
number of their players had the condition as well.</p><p>It
explained the odd lineup card.</p><p>"Five
is at first," Walsh said to his pitcher as he stood on the
dugout steps. "Thirty is at second."</p><p>"Not
short?" Misam looked out onto the field through a pair of
binoculars. The Bandits, being the road team, batted first,
and the
second hitter at the plate was a pale green sorquine wearing
a jersey
with the number 30, and no name above it. He held his bat
above his
head and waved it around in a peculiar stance that Misam had
never
seen before.</p><p>"Shorty's
at
short. She's the tall one. Fifty-one's catching and
Twenty-seven
is at third. The outfield is Two, Nineteen, and Takumi
Ishikawa."</p><p>Misam
put down his binoculars. "Wait, so most of them don't have
names? Not even ones they made up?"</p><p>"They're
reluctant
to adopt new ones," Walsh explained, handing the card
to Misam. "They want to hold out hope that they might
eventually
find out who they used to be. Looks like Ishikawa did. Good
for him."</p><p>Misam
sat down and scanned the lineup. Sure enough, only the right
fielder
had a name filled in next to their jersey number. Some of
the other
players had drawn little pictures instead: a bird, a row of
trees, a
baseball bat, and...</p><p>Misam
looked closer at that last one.</p><p>
  <span>"<i>Kyler</i>?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The
pitcher looked over. "Who's Kyler? I thought </span>
  <span>
    <i>you</i>
  </span>
  <span>
were the only new guy."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"No,
this little drawing." Misam pointed at the lineup card.
"The
lizard with the hat, next to the first baseman's number. I
have been
following this guy on Livespace for </span>
  <span>
    <i>eleven
years</i>
  </span>
  <span>."</span>
</p><p>"You
follow a lizard?"</p><p>
  <span>"No,
the guy who </span>
  <span>
    <i>draws</i>
  </span>
  <span>
the lizard! Although they might be a lizard too, I mean
I'm a cat so
you never know."</span>
</p><p>"There
are tens of billions of people in this planetary sector."
Walsh
had wandered back over to Misam's end of the dugout. "How
can
you possibly know it's them from that tiny little drawing?"</p><p>"Well,
the eyes, you know, are like this-" Misam made a little
curve
motion with his hand "-and the hair, and the way it comes
down
under the hat - it's hard to explain, okay? But this is
definitely
him. I'm totally confident."</p><p>Walsh
grabbed Misam's binoculars from the bench and looked across
the field
at the opponent's dugout. "Well, if you're right, we might
be
able to give them a lead. Tell you what. I'll put you in the
game
later, and if you get on base, you can talk to him
yourself."</p>
<hr/><p>Misam
drew a walk with no outs in the bottom of the 8th, down 5 to
nothing.
</p><p>"Are
you Kylermander?"</p><p>Five,
a young-looking light blue sorquine with a tuft of hair
barely
visible under his cap, kept his eye on the batter. "Is that
a
name or an adjective?"</p><p>
  <span>"A
name. A </span>
  <span>
    <i>screen</i>
  </span>
  <span>
name. You drew that lizard on the lineup card, right?"</span>
</p><p>"Is
that what that was?"</p><p>"Yeah!
A salamander. That's where the name comes from - the mander
part, I
mean."</p><p>Five
turned to catch a pickoff throw from the pitcher, forcing
Misam to
get back on the base. "I don't think a salamander is a
lizard,"
he said as he tossed the ball back to the mound. "I think
it's
an amphibian."</p><p>"You
don't remember it at all, do you?" Misam asked. "You used
to draw that character all the time! He's so cute!"</p><p>Five
shook his head.</p><p>"But
if you don't remember him, how can you draw him so
perfectly?"</p><p>"It's
all muscle memory," Five said. "Same way I can play
baseball. If I really am Kyber-mander or whatever, he must
have been
a pretty good ballplayer, right?"</p><p>"I
don't know his real name. Or where he lives, or what he does
for a
job. I'm pretty sure he was, like, 14 when I first found him
on
Livespace. But I've drawn him plenty of fanart." Misam
looked up
as his team's batter hit an easy pop fly to left, and jogged
back to
the base when it got caught. "Don't look that up, though. I
wasn't a very good artist back then."</p><p>"I'm
sure you were fine."</p>
<hr/><p>Deb
walked briskly down the hallway of the team hotel, wearing a
thick,
loose-fitting robe, and knocked on door 114. A groggy
Nineteen opened
the door. "Yeah?"
</p><p>"Is
Five here?"</p><p>Five
emerged from the twin bed in the back, taking off a pair of
headphones. "What's up?" he asked.</p><p>"You
said Sharona Misam was the guy who gave you the Livespace
tip, right?
Any luck with that?"</p><p>"Yeah."
He hopped off the bed. "This is really exciting. I was
actually
able to log in - I just put my hands on the keyboard and
it's like
they typed the password for me. Thirty and I haven't found
anything
in the account that gives me any more clues, though."</p><p>"I'm
sure it's only a matter of time," Deb said. "There might be
a problem, though."</p><p>"What
kind of problem?"</p><p>"I
think Misam might have been kidnapped."</p>
<hr/><p>Ashley,
Deb, and Five stood under a tree on a grassy field outside
the
darkened ballpark. It was just after dawn, and the
sorquines' shuttle
was still parked nearby, just outside the outfield wall.</p><p>"So
how'd you end up working for this club in the first place?"
Ashley asked.</p><p>"I'm
a doctor, and I like baseball. That's all there was to it.
Of course,
it was under different leadership back then. Things started
to change
pretty quick when Fulton took over."</p><p>Five
leaned against the shuttle door. "Sure, that AI guy doesn't
know
a pop fly from a firefly. But it's a long way from that to
accusing
someone of abduction."</p><p>"I've
been noticing a pattern," Deb said, quietly. "Every place
we go, every team we play, it seems like one of their best
players
has some mysterious absence after the first game. And at
around the
same time, we end up with a new player on our team. Even if
we're
nowhere near regular sorquine space."</p><p>
  <span>"So...
you think someone associated with </span>
  <span>
    <i>your</i>
  </span>
  <span>
team is turning other teams' players into sorquines and
wiping their
memories?" Ashley asked.</span>
</p><p>"The
transformation is easy enough," Deb said casually. "You
just have to get them unconscious, and hurt enough that the
goo
latches onto them. The memory thing is what I don't
understand. I'm
hoping to find people here on Earth who might be able to
figure it
out."</p><p>"You're
awfully suspicious of this charity operation you work for,
Deb. You
don't have a lot in the way of proof."</p><p>"That's
what I was hoping for from the local authorities," Deb said.
"You really don't think we should contact them?"</p><p>
  <span>"I
don't want to get any more people involved than I have
to," said
Ashley. She had put on her gray </span>
  <span>
    <i>Rootstock</i>
  </span>
  <span>
uniform and was wearing a plain green backpack. "Misam's
planet
is in a federation with this one, and if they start an
investigation,
he'll probably have to stick around here for months.
Besides, I'm not
totally convinced he's missing. The guy tends to run off
on his own."</span>
</p><p>"Shouldn't
we
be able to contact him somehow?" Five asked.</p><p>"Maybe
his culture doesn't carry computers everywhere they go. When
I grew
up, we didn't have stuff like that. If you went out of town,
you were
unavailable. That's just how it was."</p><p>"I
thought you said you were from Suriname?" Deb asked.</p><p>"Yeah
- in 1989. I got bounced to the future when I was 18. You?"</p><p>Deb
pointed upward. "The moon. 2358. I was human before I died.
Technically I still am, on the inside. On the outside, I'm,
you
know... purple." She turned to Five. "So who knows he's
missing, besides the three of us?"</p><p>"Just
Nineteen, as far as I know. I figure that's good, though -
someone
ought to know what's going on, in case we disappear too."</p><p>"I
still think this is a little absurd, but I guess I'll play
along."
She pulled an Iroshan laser bow from her backpack. "You
don't
want to tell the rest of your group?"</p><p>"Not
if I don't have to. As far as I'm concerned, they're the
most likely
suspects."</p><p>Five
crossed his arms in mock anger. "Well, now I feel left out."</p><p>"You're
also our only lead." Deb turned to Ashley. "Unless you know
where we might be able to find him."</p><p>Ashley
looked out at the rising sun. "Hmm. What day is it again?"</p>
<hr/><p>The
three of them approached the church. Five looked up at the
bell
tower, his hand over his eyes to block out the sun.</p><p>"It's
not something you hear him talk about a whole lot," Ashley
said.
"Maybe since he's on a ship full of aliens. But it seems
important to him - I don't think he'd pass up the
opportunity to
attend a service while he's here."</p><p>"A
scientist, an artist, and a man of faith?" Deb pulled out a
small camera to take a couple pictures of the building in
front of
them. "Sounds like quite the catch."</p><p>"Don't
worry," Ashley said. "Those are literally his only three
character traits."</p><p>They
made their way into the narthex as the worship service was
ending and
the mostly human congregants were filing out. Five glanced
around.
"No sign of him," he said. "Or anyone with orange
fur."</p><p>A
human woman in robes approached them. "Is there anything you
need?" she asked.</p><p>"Are
you the pastor?" asked Deb.</p><p>The
human nodded.</p><p>"We're
looking for a friend of ours. He's orange and feline."</p><p>"I
don't think I've seen anyone by that description," the
pastor
said. "At least, not since I started here. Does he live in
town?"</p><p>"He
went to college across the street about twenty years ago,"
Ashley said. "He works on an Iroshan transport now, though,
so
he doesn't get to go to church all that often anymore."</p><p>The
pastor nodded. "I've seen people in that position before. My
last church was on a starbase. We got people flying in so
they could
take communion. It was really a blessing to be in a position
to
help." She looked wistfully out the window. "It was time
for me to move back home, though. God was calling me to be
here for
my parents."</p><p>"How
many churches have you made?" Five asked.</p><p>
  <span>The
pastor smiled. "I didn't </span>
  <span>
    <i>start</i>
  </span>
  <span>
any of them. The conference assigns priests to churches in
their
jurisdiction. We rotate every so often." She gestured
towards
the stairs. "You're welcome to join us for coffee."</span>
</p><p>"Is
that a religious thing?" Ashley asked.</p><p>
  <span>"Well,
some people </span>
  <span>
    <i>are</i>
  </span>
  <span>
very serious about it."</span>
</p><p>Ashley
sat down on a bench; the narthex was mostly empty by that
point. Deb
leaned against the door next to her, reading a pamphlet
about a local
charity organization she had picked up from somewhere.</p><p>"How
does an alien come to follow an Earth religion?" Deb asked.</p><p>"I
don't know. I doubt I ever will. My parents weren't
religious, and
this sort of thing never really appealed to me." Ashley
shrugged. "Sometimes I wish I understood it."</p>
<hr/><p>Deb,
Five, and Ashley hadn't found any other leads that morning,
and game
2 was scheduled for 1:10 in the afternoon. Deb and Five
reluctantly
agreed to go ahead with the game as planned; Ashley still
wanted more
time to investigate on her own, and she had come up with some
alibi
on Misam's behalf.</p><p>Deb
was already at the lobby of the team hotel when Five and
Nineteen
arrived. "You're just in time," she said. "This guy
from Seoul's been waiting for you. He says you hacked into
his
Livespace account."</p><p>"And
he traveled all the way here?" Five asked.</p><p>"Earth
has transporters everywhere," Deb told him. "The population
is a lot more spread out than on the colony planets."</p><p>"Did
you get his name?" Nineteen asked.</p><p>"Ju-Seong
Oh."</p><p>
  <span>"<i>Ju-Seong
Oh?</i>"
Nineteen looked around, trying to find him in the crowd.
"One of
the best baseball players of the decade?"</span>
</p><p>"I
mean, not a lot of people are playing old-fashioned baseball
anymore." Five shrugged.</p><p>
  <span>"That's
</span>
  <span>
    <i>exactly</i>
  </span>
  <span>
what he always says in interviews!" Nineteen grabbed
Five's
shoulders, then ran off. "Is he in the room? I'll go talk
to
him."</span>
</p><p>Deb
watched him go. "Maybe she's just excited about meeting his
personal hero... but doesn't this kind of blow a hole in our
theory?"</p><p>"What
do you mean?" Five asked.</p><p>
  <span>"Once
you were able to log into that Livespace account via
muscle memory,"
said Deb, "we assumed it must belong to you - or whatever
human
you used to be. But you can't </span>
  <span>
    <i>be</i>
  </span>
  <span>
Ju-Seong Oh. Not when the man himself is here in this same
hotel."</span>
</p><p>Five
looked down at his blue, three-fingered hands. "Then who am
I?"</p>
<hr/><p>Ashley
took a seat on the third-base side. She liked being close to
the
action, but even though there were a lot of empty seats
behind home
plate, she was almost 200 centimeters tall, and whenever
someone was
sitting behind her, she was always a little bit worried she
would
block their view. Deb, who had given up on being
inconspicuous, was
seated a few chairs away, with a mint cola ("popular on the
moon", apparently) from the concession stand.</p><p>The
home team was warming up on the field when she noticed
someone hop
the fence from the wall in center-right.</p><p>Someone
orange.</p><p>Misam
- in casual clothes - ran down the field, attracting some
curious
looks from the sorquines along the way. He kicked off his
sandals,
crossed second and third base, and finally made it to Deb's
seat.</p><p>Deb
watched in rapt attention the entire way. "OK, I won't sell
my
Red Sox tickets!" she said, laughing. "You're not going to
get in trouble, are you?"</p><p>"It's
a municipal field," said Misam. "There are, like, 40 people
here. No one's gonna care. Although I should make sure Five
doesn't
steal my sandals."</p><p>"Speaking
of
stealing," Ashley said. "Where were you? We thought you
might have been kidnapped."</p><p>"Yeah,
uh... I was on the sorquines' carrier ship. You should
probably take
a look."</p>
<hr/><p>Deb
glanced back at the door to her quarters as she followed Misam
through the corridors of her team's ship. Ashley followed
along,
laser bow in hand.</p><p>"There
are a lot of holographic simulation rooms for such a small
ship,"
Ashley said. "Are those for the team to practice?"</p><p>"They're
not
for the players," said Deb. "Each one is constantly
running simulated games using hologram replicas of the team,
in all
sorts of permutations. That's how they analyze player
performance."</p><p>"And
they can't use computers?"</p><p>"Real-world
physics.
Small differences in the ball make a big difference in
launch speed and angle, and you can get more accuracy from a
holographic baseball than a simulated one." Deb peeked into
one
of the simulation rooms, where a hologram of Five was
standing at
home plate, squaring to bunt. "And it does a pretty good job
of
capturing everyone's idiosyncrasies, too." She looked
around.
"We better hurry. Fulton probably already knows he's here.
I'm
sure he'll send people after us."</p><p>Misam
glanced back at Deb from down the hall. "I don't think we'll
have to worry about that. Fulton doesn't even know what's
really
happening here."</p><p>"Then
who does?"</p><p>
  <span>"Nobody.
That's </span>
  <span>
    <i>exactly</i>
  </span>
  <span>
the problem."</span>
</p><p>Misam
arrived at a nondescript gray door. Before Deb could hand
him her
security card, he pressed the lock pad, and the door opened
on its
own.</p><p>Ashley
was the first to step into the area. It was much larger than
even the
simulator rooms. Large cylindrical containers, colored an
opaque
green, were laid out in rows on each side of the room, each
of them
hooked up to giant batteries and tall stacks of nutrient
storage and
medical equipment.</p><p>Deb
looked around in awe. "Cloning chambers?" she asked. "So
it wasn't kidnapping after all."</p><p>"No
reason to steal someone else's shortstop when you can grow
your own,"
said Misam.</p><p>Ashley
walked across the room, inspecting each cloning pod.
"They're
all empty," she said as she slowly made her way to the
opposite
wall.</p><p>"How's
this even possible?" Misam asked. "People have been trying
to clone humans with their memories intact for centuries,
but
nobody's ever been able to put anything together they can
reproduce."</p><p>"Not
that hard with a sorquine." Deb's expression turned sour.
"Use
the replicator to make a dead body, then bring it back to
life. My
question is, who put them here?"</p><p>"I'm
guessing independent contractors hired anonymously for a
one-off
job," Misam said. "I'm sure the computer would tell you."</p><p>"Assuming
whoever
hired them didn't wipe the computer afterwards?"</p><p>"Computers
don't
typically wipe themselves."</p><p>
  <span>Ashley
turned around. "You're saying the </span>
  <span>
    <i>computer</i>
  </span>
  <span>
decided to make a bunch of clones?"</span>
</p><p>"Fulton
built the thing himself," Misam said. "It's supposed to be
'self-sufficient'. And if all he told it was that he wanted
a good
baseball team..."</p><p>"...and
gave it a whole bunch of money?" Deb put her hands in her
pockets and looked up at the cloning pod next to her. "Yeah,
I
could see him skipping a couple steps. Like 'don't make
copies of
people against their will'."</p><p>"And
'don't resurrect the dead,' perhaps?" Ashley held up a
datapad she had been carrying.
"I don't know if you consider this proof, but if Misam can
use a
doodle as evidence..."</p><p>Misam
took the datapad.</p><p>"I
knew that batting stance looked familiar, but it didn't make
sense
until now," Ashley continued. "Craig Counsell, infielder
for the 1997 World Series champion Florida Marlins. I'm not
exactly
an expert on baseball, but this guy's batting stance always
stuck out
even to me."</p><p>"This
must be where they got Thirty." Misam turned to Deb. "And
not just from DNA, either. A batter's stance at the plate is
something that develops over time."</p><p>"I
see two possibilities," said Deb. "The first is a
combination
of holographic reproductions and old DNA records. The second
is grave
robbery. Either way, it's a crime. Why are you smiling?"</p><p>
  <span>Misam
didn't try to hide it. "Fulton is going to be in so much
trouble," he said. "He</span>
  <span>
    <i>
accidentally</i>
  </span>
  <span>
cloned a bunch of dead people. Who </span>
  <span>
    <i>does</i>
  </span>
  <span>
that? This has got to be the craziest thing I've seen
since I left
Starfleet."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Well,
</span>
  <span>
    <i>I'm</i>
  </span>
  <span>
gonna be out of a job." Deb sighed. "No way they're gonna
keep the team running after this."</span>
</p><p>"You
can treat humans, can't you?" asked Ashley.</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>"Maybe
you can work with us at General Interplanetary. There are a
lot of
humans on Iroshar who go places on our ships, and Fer's been
on the
lookout for another doctor who can treat them."</p>
<hr/><p>Five
threw himself onto the bed, still wearing the undershirt from
uniform.</p><p>"I
thought I'd have some life to go back to," he said. "Didn't
think some other guy would already be living it."</p><p>"Look
on the bright side, Five." Nineteen took a canned tea from
the
hotel room's minifridge. If this was the last game his team
would
ever play, he was going to milk the opportunity for all it
was worth.
"Now you have someone new to follow on Livespace. You two
can do
fanart for each other."</p><p>"Oh
already drew me something. He's so much better than I am."
Five
rolled onto his back. "Probably time for me to pick a name
for
myself."</p><p>"Maybe,"
said
Nineteen. "I'm still gonna hold out a little longer, I
think."</p><p>"You
know, we didn't find any files on you. You must not be a
clone like
most of the others. What do you think will happen with the
team?"</p><p>"I'm
sure they'll shut it down."</p><p>"And
Fulton's computer?"</p><p>"To
be honest, I hope they keep it online," Nineteen said. "It
seems to know a lot of baseball players. Maybe it can help
figure out
who I am."</p>
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